


Removing the Inches Between Them

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 07:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15967256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: When Cas fell from the end of Lucifer's blade and burned his wings into the floor, Dean couldn't help but keep a souvenir of his lost friend.Long after Cas returns from the Empty, Dean is finally brave enough to return it.Update: Now with art from the amazingFoxymoley!<3





	Removing the Inches Between Them

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially a quick little ficlet that never made it to tumblr during Season 13, when I wrote it. It got lost in the google doc graveyard, but I found it last week and thought I'd tidy it up and share.
> 
> Generously beta'd by the delightful [athaclena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athaclena/pseuds/athaclena).
> 
> Update: Now with art by the amazing [Foxy!](https://foxymoley.tumblr.com/) You can find her [here, as foxymoley on AO3.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxymoley/pseuds/foxymoley)

 

 

Cas was walking past Dean’s bedroom, headed toward the library where he planned to spend the night going over Sam’s research notes. He saw that Dean’s door was ajar but thought little of it—there had been many times Dean had drunk a beer or five too many and had slept face down on the bed with the door open.

Out of habit, he moved to close it.

“Hey, Cas.”

Not drunk, then.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas paused in the doorway.

“It’s nice to see you when it’s quiet. When the world isn’t ending,” Dean commented with a little grin. He was sat on the edge of his mattress in his standard “the world is not ending” bunker uniform: sweatpants and a faded band shirt.

“It’s unusual,” Cas nodded in response. “Welcome, but unusual.”

Dean looked considering for a moment, worrying at his bottom lip. “It is. Actually, uh, we haven’t really stopped Cas, since you came back from the Empty. It’s been one thing after another, one world after another, disaster upon disaster.”

“That’s true,” Cas sighed, moving into Dean’s room as it seemed his friend was in a chatty mood. Cas wondered if he had been drinking after all.

“There was—” Dean trailed off for a moment, his nerves pouring out of his fingers in a series of picking motions at the heavy, beige wool blanket that spread across his bed. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to give you, ever since you came back.”

Cas tilted his head in that cat-like, squinty way that Dean knew he’d had for years, but suspected he’d had for millennia. “Give me?” he echoed, his rumbling voice deeply curious.

“It’s nothing, really. Kinda silly. I know you have others. I just—” Dean stopped talking, standing up from the bed and moving toward his desk.

He hesitated, hand on the metal pull of the top drawer.

“I’m sure it’s not as silly as you think, Dean,” Cas coaxed, taking a step toward him and reaching to squeeze his shoulder. He didn’t understand the source of Dean’s hesitation, but he knew Dean was many times more critical of himself than was necessary. He felt confident this was no different.

Dean cleared his throat and wrenched open the desk drawer viciously. Either it had personally offended him, or he was forcing himself to perform the action through whatever emotion he was trying to hide.

Cas said nothing.

From the very back of the drawer, Dean pulled out a long, fabric wrapped object. It appeared to be wrapped in a scrap of gauzy cream material, some kind of curtain or drape. He held it in both hands, gazing down at it a moment before he looked up at Cas.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled again, holding the object out in both hands.

The wrinkles on Cas’s forehead were a map leading to his confusion, but he reached out to take the bundle. Silently, he unwrapped the lightweight material.

Cas was only vaguely aware of Dean stepping back from him, lowering himself down to sit on the edge of his memory foam mattress. He said something, but Cas didn’t really hear it. His attention was entirely caught by the heavy blade in his hands, shining like silver to his vessel's eyes but incandescent to his grace.

 

 

 

Dean probably didn’t realize it, but every angel blade was unique. Any blade could be used by any wielder, but every one of them was made for a specific angel. Many of the Host had multiple blades—Cas had been through many over the eons—but every blade had a deep internal signature of ownership that Dean couldn’t have perceived. But this was one of Cas’s. And somehow, Dean knew that.

Cas slowly turned the long, smooth blade in his hands. There were traces of blood on the blade, so small that Dean wouldn’t have known about those either. Cas knew exactly which blade this was.

“I used this when we first went to the apocalypse world,” he croaked out, raising his vivid blue gaze to Dean. “I used this the day I died. I stabbed Lucifer with it.”

Dean nodded, not meeting Cas’s look. “Yeah. You, uh, were still holding it when you came back through the rift. When he killed you.”

Cas’s eyes returned to the blade for a moment, his fingers sliding along the blade to the tip. After a moment, he slowly began rewrapping the fabric around it.

“Sorry I didn’t have anything better to keep it in,” Dean cleared his throat, gruff. “That was the only fabric to hand. It’s what’s left of—”

“Of what?” Cas encouraged after a moment, fixing Dean with a curious look as he stepped toward the bed where he sat.

“Of, uh,” Dean moistened his lips uncomfortably. “Of the curtain I used to wrap you up. Before I—”

“Before you burned my body,” Cas finished for him, taking mercy on Dean when his voice cracked.

“Yeah.”

Sitting next to Dean now, Cas held the blade between both his hands, letting it rest weightily on his palms as he looked down at it. “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

When Cas looked back up, his gaze pinned Dean. “Why did you keep this?”

The clock that sat on Dean’s dresser, a tan plastic contraption that had been in the bunker since long before Dean was born, ticked accusingly.

The air puffed out of Dean slowly, deflating the tense moment with a breath that had been held for a long time—since the day he’d last seen Cas’s eyes light blue-white from the back, his grace streaming from his body in response to the weapon thrust through his chest from behind.

Dean's voice was tiny, fearful, alien. “It was all I had.”

Cas shifted, his body turning toward Dean in a visceral, automatic reaction to his words. It was a tone he’d so rarely heard from Dean, and never in relation to him. The sound of sorrow, of grief, of a deep, weeping wound.

Perhaps Dean had used that voice before in relation to Cas. But he’d never been around to hear it.

“Dean,” Cas reached up to his plaid shoulder, cautiously. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the pain my death caused you. It was stupid and I—I should have realized.”

“You made a bad call, Cas. We’ve all done it.” Dean choked, refusing to look up from his hands. The knuckles of his right-hand ground back and forth across the palm of his left, almost as if he wanted to punch something, but was resisting. Forcing back the urge, the emotion.

“Jack brought me back, Dean.” Cas’s hand crushed at Dean’s shoulder, pushing at it to turn them further toward each other, so that he could clap his arms around Dean. Hugging was usually only something they did as a greeting, but this seemed right. Cas hoped he hadn’t read the cues wrong. Dean was uncomfortable enough already, it seemed.

Whether Cas had been right or wrong, Dean responded. His forehead rested at Cas’s shoulder for a moment, and his arms eased around him.

_Cas is alive, Cas is here_ , Dean’s body seemed to say; it relaxed at the realization and he slumped slightly, letting his weight loll into Cas’s trench coat. The collar shoved at his cheek, but the hug wasn’t awkward. Instead, it was somewhat desperate, but also real and grounding.

“I’m here now Dean. I’m back.” Cas repeated, somewhere above Dean’s shoulder.

Knowing that his face was hidden to Cas in the position he was in, Dean took a moment to squeeze his eyes shut, blinking away the tears that had been threatening. “I missed you,” Dean admitted boldly. “When you were gone. I think maybe Jack realized that. Realized the events of his birth led to—” he drifted off uncertain.

“Led to my death,” Cas finished for him. “He felt guilty and his powers brought me back. But I think maybe—”

It was Cas’s turn to trail off, and Dean raised his head. They drew back but didn’t release each other completely.

“I think he did it for you too,” Cas finished firmly after a moment, searching out Dean’s eyes. “He realized the source of your pain, and it fueled his guilt.”

Dean shrugged awkwardly. “Don’t say that, dude. You make it sound like I—like I was some kind of mourning widow, or… something. Jack just wanted to help.”

“Weren’t you?” Cas’s voice held a strange tone. “Or something?”

The silence was very tense, but it didn’t last long, Cas speaking up again before Dean had a chance to retreat or dismiss.

“You kept my angel blade, Dean.”

“Yeah.” The response was aimed at Cas’s chin as Dean’s eyes slowly dropped.

“And when I was in purgatory, you kept my coat.”

“Yeah.” The second response was quieter and landed somewhere around Cas’s chest.

The hand that moved to Dean’s jaw, guiding his eyes back up to Cas’s, trembled uncharacteristically. “You’re not usually sentimental, Dean. Not for anyone except your direct family. Sam. Your mother, your father.”

They stared clichés into each other’s eyes for long seconds. Dean registered that he should have been embarrassed at how corny they looked, but what did he care about shame or clichés when Cas’s eyes were so very blue?

“It’s not usually you. You’re family, Cas. I love you.” Dean struggled.

The hand at Dean’s jaw began to drop as Dean verbally grouped him with his family. Cas appreciated being so. He knew it was a level of trust and love Dean didn’t give easily, letting someone into his family. But—

“Don’t.”

Cas froze.

After a moment when he could hear Dean’s heartbeat in the pervasive silence, Cas moved his hand cautiously back.

Dean caught it, avoiding Cas’s eyes as his tilted his cheek into the angel’s palm. Just those couple of inches of bravery, the short space Cas’s hand reclaimed, was all it took.

“I love you, Cas. Not like Sam, or my mom, or my dad.”

Cas could still barely believe what was happening: that Dean had kept his angel blade, that Dean had mourned him more than he’d realized, that Dean had been so sentimental—for him.

They were close on the bed, Cas’s hand once more cupping at Dean’s cheek. He could smell the panic rolling off Dean in waves, getting stronger every silent second that passed.

Responding to it instinctively, Cas pulled gently at Dean’s jaw. He tugged him closer across the bare foot of space between them. Cas didn’t know the words he needed to say to make this alright, didn’t know how to unlock what was in Dean that was giving him such rising panic. But he could kiss him, he decided, and show Dean that he felt whatever this was too. And Dean would either push him away and be mad, or he wouldn’t.

Cas’s lips were clumsy. It was hardly a first kiss for him, there had been situations before where the need or want for such things had arisen. But this was different. It meant something no other had.

With his eyes squeezed shut more from fear than from any attempt at subtlety or romance, Cas kept very still.

Dean’s lips moved under his, met them and returned his effort.

Cas felt it forcefully, like something in him was melting, a block that had kept back everything he had tried to _not_ want, to _not_ feel. Reducing him down to something very human.

Dean felt it in the reverse; something rising up in him to burst out, making him more than he was.

The astonished little laugh they exchanged in the breathing space between them was the biggest relief, to both of their ears.

When their lips met again it was different; deliberate, not clumsy; welcoming, not cautious.

Against Dean’s mouth, Cas returned Dean’s earlier words. “I love you too, Dean. Perhaps this isn’t how you meant it when—”

“It was,” Dean interrupted, a little breathless. “It always was. It was always this, every other thing that I said.”

Cas’s head tilted curiously, still so close to Dean’s face that he felt the movement as much as saw it.

“I need you,” Dean offered. “I’d rather have you. Best friend. They were all things I said that I didn’t quite mean, I guess. I meant this.”

Cas’s smile was small but radiant. “I did all of it for you. A profound bond, I’ll watch over you,” he quoted back. “I’ve been doing the same thing for ten years, Dean.”

“Let’s stop doing it.” Dean murmured softly against his lips.

“Yes, let’s stop that,” Cas responded into his mouth, removing the inches between them.

The angel blade was put aside, along with hesitation, uncertainty, and fear. What was left was new, but also quite old.

That was okay, both of their lips agreed.

They got there in the end.

 


End file.
